Tag: Fraud

Trulioo, a global identity verification company, has rolled out its real-time identity verification platform for citizens in six new Latin America countries.

The platform is called GlobalGateway and has extended its reach to countries such as Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador and Venezuela. The increased coverage will also help further the company’s mission to provide cross-border Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML)-compliant identity verification for every individual around the globe.

Recent growth in the Latin American economy, a welcome change after nearly two years of declining activity, has seen a transformation within the financial sector. Recent research from Finnovista shows that the number of fintech startups in Latin America recently surpassed 1,000, many of which are catering to the large unbanked population while also reshaping the traditional banking landscape.

A major global cyber-attack has the potential to trigger up to US$53 billion of economic losses – greater than some of Australia’s worst natural disasters combined.

The equivalent cost is more than five times the economic losses recorded for the devastating 2011 Queensland floods, one of the most damaging natural disasters recorded at an estimated cost of A$14.1 billion or US$10.7 billion.

The joint research undertaken by Lloyd’s and cybersecurity advisor Cyence examined the potential economic impact of two global scenarios:

A malicious hack that takes down a cloud service provider with estimated losses of up to US$53 billion; and
Attacks on computer operating systems run by a large number of businesses around the world, which could cause losses of US$28.7 billion.
The research acknowledged that economic losses could be much lower or higher than the average in the scenarios because of the uncertainty around cyber aggregation.

For example, while average losses in the cloud service disruption scenario are US$53 billion for an extreme event, they could be as high as US$121 billion or as low as US$15 billion, depending on factors such as the different organisations involved and how long the cloud service disruption lasts for.

The findings also revealed that, while the global demand for cyber insurance is on the rise, the majority of losses are not currently insured, leaving an insurance gap of tens of billions of dollars.

Cyber risk exposures
Asked about the implications for Australia, Lloyd’s general representative in Australia, Chris Mackinnon, said the implications were huge for local businesses of all sizes and across all sectors.

“Businesses today are interconnected by digital technology and services, meaning a single cyber event can cause a severe impact across an economy, triggering multiple claims and dramatically increasing insurers’ claims costs,” he said.

“This report gives us a real sense of the extent of damage a single, extreme cyber-attack could cause. An attack of that magnitude could create losses bigger than of some of Australia’s worst natural disasters combined.”

“Where a decade ago people would talk about preventing a cyber-attack, the reality today is that any business with proprietary information worth protecting is vulnerable to attack. The issue is how you mitigate against that risk,” Mackinnon said.

“These scenarios are designed to help both businesses and insurers gain a better understanding of their cyber risk exposures and better manage these complex and rising risks.”

Since its inception in 2014, there have been over 114,000 reports of cybercrime registered with the Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network (ACORN). Notably, 23,700 of these have been reported over the last six months, highlighting a growing occurrence of cyber-criminal activity.

Safaricom is set to give merchants access to photo identification technology in a bid to reduce fraud on its m-Pesa platform, Business Daily reported.

According to the newspaper, Safaricom is already distributing pre-programmed smartphones to m-Pesa agents to verify the identity of customers. These handsets have software built-in to enable verification against images taken when the SIM card was purchased and other nationally held data.

Vendors with the devices will also be required to take images of all new registrants, which will then be stored in a database for verification of future transactions. This is in addition to current procedures, which include recording the new user’s name, ID card number and postal address.

M-Pesa is Kenya’s dominant mobile payment service and become a blueprint for similar services across developing markets. However, its wide usage also made the platform and its users a target for criminals.

In addition to well-documented hacking attempts against the company, there are regular reports in the Kenyan media of scams targeted at users to extort money using the platform.

Announcing the new photo ID scheme, Safaricom corporate affairs director Stephen Chege told the publication the new system of registration would eliminate the use of stolen personal ID to commit fraud.

Jumio has announced the partnership with digital bank Monzo, to verify new users and support know-your-customer (KYC) requirements.

Monzo will use Jumio’s Netverify to help verify customers who are moving from its prepaid card service to a full current account. This will enable the bank to comply with KYC requirements while removing the manual verifications from Monzo employees.

Jumio’s solution will also be used to verify existing prepaid card consumers and new people signing up for Monzo’s current accounts.

Jumio is an identity verification and credentials company that helps businesses reduce fraud. The company utilises proprietary computer vision technology to reduce customer sign-up and checkout friction.

The analysis, however, points out that most merchants will receive value for their investment. Consequently, Juniper Research believes that extra effort is needed in educating merchants on the benefits of FDP (fraud detection and prevention).

The research points out that CNP physical goods sales are especially vulnerable to fraud, where loses will reach USD 14.8 billion annually in 2022. In spite of these figures, retailers are unwilling to impose rigorous ID checks on pick-up, fearing that this practice would damage the consumer experience and affect conversion rates.

Finally, the research argues that machine learning will be a key tool in identifying genuine users and combating fraud in 2018. At the same time, the ecommerce market will rely on 3DS 2.0 and biometrics.